The first openly gay candidate for a conservative Queens school board is stirring up an old controversy over whether children should be taught tolerance of homosexuals.

“I’m not saying we should promote a lifestyle. I’m saying we should teach tolerance and understanding of everyone,” said Wayne Mahlke, 37, a gay activist, Elmhurstommunity board member and administrator for a nonprofit group that serves autistic kids.

Mahlke aims to shake up the only school board in the city that forbids sex-education teachers to mention homosexuality, abortion, masturbation and contraception.

It was District 24’s battle to kill the controversial Rainbow Curriculum that led to the firing of former Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez in 1992.

Mahlke says that if elected, he’ll fight to lift the decade-long ban on the sex topics, promote multicultural education, and revive a Rainbow-like curriculum to teach kids about a variety of nontraditional households.

“We know there are gay and lesbian people who have children in the public school system, And yes, we need to say, ‘This is another family model.'” Mahlke told The Post.

Mahlke was immediately attacked by ultra-conservative board member Frank Borzellieri, who once demanded the removal of a school library book on Martin Luther King Jr. because it painted the civil-rights leader as a “saint.”

“Wayne Mahlke’s role as a candidate is to further the disgusting, radical, homosexual agenda which wants, among other things, to have first-graders see pictures of two men in bed,” he charged.

Borzellieri cited a children’s book in the Rainbow Curriculum, “My Daddy Has a Roommate,” about a boy with a gay dad. Illustrations include a bedroom scene.

Mahlke bristled. “I don’t want the children to see pictures of anyone in bed, period. But I’m not going to ban books either. Our job is to educate – not censor.”

Borzellieri called Mahlke the “right-hand man” of District 24 teacher Daniel Dromme, who is active in school issues and is president of the Queens Lesbian and Gay Pride Committee.

Mahlke, the group’s treasurer, acknowledged a “working relationship” with Dromme, but added, “I’m not anyone’s puppet.”

He accused Borzellieri of pushing “hatred, bigotry, and intolerance.”

“Most hate crimes, like the beating murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in Wyoming last year, are committed by young people aged 16 to 21,” he said.

“The only way to stop hate crimes is for us to teach our children that differences are not something to fear.”